Atlantic and SyFy Wire Tell The Story of Image Comics

They often say: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

This certainly can be said of seven men who risked it all to start their own company, Image Comics, in 1992. Since then, it has gone on to become one of the most successful and influential publishing companies within the comic book industry. Legends within the industry in their own right, Image Comics was founded by those aforementioned seven men — a dream team comprised of Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, and Rob Liefeld — in an attempt to create a venue for artists to not only publish their works, but also maintain creative ownership.

In a new SyFyWire documentary titled So Much Damage: How Image Comics Changed the World, host Mike Avila took a look back with the founders on the company’s early days and its eventual impact in the 25 years since. Culled together with snippets of previously shot interview footage of the founders from their vaults, the final result is a five-part documentary dream come true, indeed. For the documentary, SyFy teamed up with Atlantic to shoot the interviews over various days and across many locations, using crews local to Portland, Phoenix and San Francisco. We shot multiple interviews at a white cyc studio space in Portland, and were able to acquire the Amazing Fantasy Comic Book Shop for our San Francisco venue.

On each interview, Atlantic’s DPs shot on two Sony FS7s, along with our accompanying sound recordist and a SyFy producer, who also conducted the interviews. Additionally, we had a local producer and make-up artist present for comic book legend Todd McFarlane’s interview in Phoenix. Footage from the Phoenix and San Francisco shoots were then sent via Aspera, whilst footage and audio from Portland travelled on a hard drive with their producer.

You can watch all five parts of So Much Damage: How Image Comics Changed the World on SyFy Wire here. The first part is available below: